CPU History

[MasterOC]

Just to see how old some of you actually are and whats passed through your hands over the years. Your thoughts on these cpus and your fond memories

My history

Intel 80486 ( my first cpu, back when my top visited site on dialup was cartoon network )
AMD Duron 800 ( back when BF 1942 was the go to! )
Athlon 1Ghz Tbird ( hand me down upgrade from me father, I remember the hype when this arrived )
Athlon 1.4 Tbird ( another hand me down, miss this era )
Duron 1300mhz (a slight downgrade when my athlon died out of warranty)
Athlon 2500 Barton ( what an absolute monster this was )
Athlon 64 x2 5000+ ( ran this with 7900gt sli , first dual gpu rig )
Phenom 955 BE ( i miss this cpu , an unhealthy attachment for what was the worse period in my life)
For 6100 ( yeah stupid me )
For 8320 ( I never learn , but paired with a 780ghz at the time was fairly potent )
4770k ( monstered the 8320 and was beautiful )
5820k ( back when an enthusiast cpu was 300 quid , mid end consumer cpus costing that now )
Ryzen 1700 ( AMD was back , now in daughters pc still doing well with a 1080 )
Ryzen 2700 ( I killed this with some amount of voltage, ended up buying a 2700x and sold the 2700 once replaced )
Ryzen 2700x ( I got 5fps avg more on metro exodus... its weird when that felt worth the outlay)
Ryzen 3800x ( AMD coming into the high end again , maybe i am a fan.)
Ryzen 5900x ( waiting for this to arrive today! Hurrrah! Top end once again)

 

[crazyDAJT]

Mine is a bit shorter

Athlon 64 x2
Q6600 - gave this to my brother
I7 920 (this is when I got into custom loop watercooling)
Side grade to a x5650 (overclockers the snot out of it to 4.4GHZ)
Built an unraid server on a 2700x and realised I got better performance in a Windows VM.
Flipped the 2700x for a 3900x and now runs a 6c/12t windows 10Vm and is only about 1-2% off bare metal performance but I can use the other cores for server stuff.

edit: for me my favourite are the Athlon 64 x 2 and the X5650, for £40 it was the best upgrade ever!

 

[philo-sofa]

80386 DX 33 (Family computer)
80486 DX2 66 (Family computer)

<- 5 yr gap Gap

Intel Pentium 4 90mhz (Dell system: slow CPU & RD-Ram annoyed for years)
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3000+ (First self built PC & first dual core)
Intel E6600 (First overclocked PC)
Intel E8600 (First to hit 4GHz)
Intel i7 860 (First Quad Core & first SSD: aged magnificently)
Intel i5 3570k (First mini-itx)
Intel i5 6600k (Most ‘meh’ upgrade, mainly to get out of mini-itx)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (First 8 core)

Latest would have been an R9 5900X, but stock was sparse. Still the Octo-core sits with the Athlon 64 3000+ and i7 860 (first dual and quad cores) as the biggest revelation.

 

[MasterOC]

which one is best, in your opinion?

For the most used, best memories , features etc ive gotta say it was the Barton core

 

[Quartz]

I started off with a 6502 and I haven't kept track. I know I upgraded frequently in the 90s and early 2000s. I even had a Cyrix at one point. I had dual Celerons and dual P3s on the Abit BP6 and VP6 boards.

My current CPU is an i7 8700 and my last was an i7 3770S.

 

[bakes0310]

Cant remember specifics but i think it went:
pentium 2
athlon x2 3000+
2500k (best cpu out the lot)
amd 965 black edition
intel 4950k
intel 6700k (current-first mitx build)

 

[BUDFORCE]

Pentium 75
Pentium 500
AMD athlon 2100+
AMD Sempron 2900 (I think)
I can't remember the next two but were both AMD dual core somethings
Intel i7-2600k
AMD Ryzen 5800x

The i7-2600k lasted the longest by far, nearly 10 years and is now serving my 12 year old. Fantastic CPU, heavily overclocked its entire life and always run cool.

I'm sure it'll do another 5 years in his build and when it eventually gives up or gets replaced I'm framing it.

 

[Robzere31]

Can't remember every CPU I've ever had.

First I remember was the Z80 In the ZX81 I had, but first PC CPU was P1 150mhz which I overclocked to 180mhz.

 

[andy_mk3]

I don't remember very well from when I was very young, but the first I know of was a new PC we got when XP came out, so it goes something like:

• AMD Althlon/Duron (Circa 2001, Family PC)
• Intel Celeron M (Laptop, and later upgraded to a Pentium 4, First Personal Laptop)
• AMD Sempron 3000+ (Socket 939, First Personal PC)
• AMD Turion64 (Later Upgraded to a dual core)
• Intel E8600 (First self-purchased and self-built PC)
• Intel i5-540M (First self-purchased Laptop)
• Intel Q6600
• Intel i5 2500k
• Intel i7 2600k
• AMD A4-4000 (HTPC)
• AMD Turion II Neo N54L (HP Microserver)
  
• Intel i7 4720HQ (Laptop)
• Intel Xeon X5670 (Dual Socket 2U Server)
• Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 (Single Socket 1U Server)
• Intel i7 8565U (Laptop)
• AMD R9 3900x (First Watercooled PC)
• AMD R5 3600 (First ITX PC)

Can't think of any others right now. I think I still own a good half of these!

 

[SexyGreyFox]

First was a 386SX20
The first system I built was based on a DX266
I had systems based on Cyrix and IDT Winchip 2
I had a Celeron 300 and if my memory serves me right this was the chip that started Millennium Computers overclocking and they eventually changed their name to Overclockers. The Celeron came in 4 sizes, something like 300, 350, 400 and 450.
It was then a mixture of AMD and Intel up to the i7 I had when it came out.

 

[Admiral Huddy]

Not as interesting as some:

Jan-02 - AMD 2000+ T'bred
Jan-03 - AMD 2600+ T'bred (333fsb)
Jan-04 - AMD 3200+ Barton (400fsb)
Oct-05 - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core (Toledo) 4400+ (1mb)
Oct-07 - Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 - "Energy Efficient" SLACR 95W (best Bang-forBuck CPU ever)
Aug-12 - Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) – Retail
Jun-16 - Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail

Looks like I'm due an upgrade.

 

[4K8KW10]

which one is best, in your opinion?

The last, of course.

Mine:

Pentium 233 MHz
Pentium II 450 MHz
Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (recently upgraded to Athlon 64 4400+ X2 Toledo)
Core 2 Quad Q9450
Core 2 Duo T5250 upgraded later to Core 2 Duo T6600
Ryzen 5 2500U
Ryzen 9 5900X

 

[philo-sofa]

... I even had a Cyrix at one point.

Fascinating! How did that occur and how did it go?

I don't remember very well from when I was very young, but the first I know of was a new PC we got when XP came out, so it goes something like:

• AMD Althlon/Duron (Circa 2001, Family PC)
• Intel Celeron M (Laptop, and later upgraded to a Pentium 4, First Personal Laptop)
• AMD Sempron 3000+ (Socket 939, First Personal PC)
• AMD Turion64 (Later Upgraded to a dual core)
• Intel E8600 (First self-purchased and self-built PC)
• Intel i5-540M (First self-purchased Laptop)
• Intel Q6600
• Intel i5 2500k
• Intel i7 2600k
• AMD A4-4000 (HTPC)
• AMD Turion II Neo N54L (HP Microserver)
  
• Intel i7 4720HQ (Laptop)
• Intel Xeon X5670 (Dual Socket 2U Server)
• Intel Xeon E3-1230v2 (Single Socket 1U Server)
• Intel i7 8565U (Laptop)
• AMD R9 3900x (First Watercooled PC)
• AMD R5 3600 (First ITX PC)

Great history!

 

[greatash]

Fairly short list for me

E8400 (first desktop CPU I got in 2008 I think?, was 15? years old and was sick of playing WoW on a crappy laptop at 15-30fps)

I5 2500k (for battlefield 3, had first part time job so built a £900 or so system with this and a 6950, still in use in my brother's PC)

R5 2600 (felt like the 2500k had run its course and needed more threads, went for this with the plan of upgrading to ryzen 3000).

R7 3800xt (got a 3060ti and the 2600 was holding it back, picked this up for cheap and sold for same cost)

R7 5800x (got a 3080 and want the most out of it, 3800xt held it back in some games since I play at 1440 mostly)

 

[Quartz]

Fascinating! How did that occur and how did it go?

My PC got stolen and the Cyrix was the best replacement. It was the P200, I think. And it went like stink! Of course it was rapidly overhauled but those were the days. I've seen personal computers go from 1 MHz to 5 GHz.

 

[andy_mk3]

Great history!

Thanks haha! Actually realised I have missed a few as I've had a few Panasonic Toughbooks for work and I also have a SFF Dell at work

 

[4K8KW10]

Not as interesting as some:

Jan-02 - AMD 2000+ T'bred
Jan-03 - AMD 2600+ T'bred (333fsb)
Jan-04 - AMD 3200+ Barton (400fsb)
Oct-05 - Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core (Toledo) 4400+ (1mb)
Oct-07 - Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 - "Energy Efficient" SLACR 95W (best Bang-forBuck CPU ever)
Aug-12 - Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) – Retail
Jun-16 - Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail

Looks like I'm due an upgrade.

Well, thanks to AMD's rapid development since 2017, your current CPU is slower than AMD's low-end Ryzen 3 3100.

Yes, it is time to buy something new and the new performance would be on another level

 

[Grimley]

I started a similar thread about 12 years ago & here it is. Perhaps the dons want to merge both?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/threads/your-cpu-history-tree.17946271/

 

[Doug2507]

Too many to list now but like others, dx2 66. Iirc it had 5 1/4 like the 386 but one was swapped out for a mahoosive 20mb hdd. Cutting edge back then! Spent many hours playing gunship, space quest 2 and elite.

Then pentium came along and absolutely obliterated it. Remember a pal had a p90, the tower was huge! Think that was the start of playing wing commander. Loved it!

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Ex-school 286 12MHz running DOS and Win 3.1
486 SX2-50 (OC'd to 66MHz!)
P60
P90
P2-233
P3-450 I think
Athlon XP 3000+
Athlon64 X2 6000+
i5 2500K
i7 4770K
Ryzen 2700X

The Pentium rigs were all ghetto systems in my college days. The P60 was components on the floor, didn't even have a case...